Serón to Dickson

I’m in my tent on Sunday night at Camp Dickson, listening to the medium heavy rain falling down.

We were expecting a very challenging rain day, and all of us had prepped for an easy exit and hike start. Karen and I turned in very early and I think I was asleep by 8pm. It was fairly noisy outside the tent: golf conversation, a ukulele concert, and general chit chat. Didn’t impact my ability to get to sleep.

The rain started at 2:30, with some high winds. I slept well but as wake up approached I had some mild dread about what camp breakdown would be like. Karen talked to me and said she was breaking down her tent while it was still dry, thinking more rain is likely to come. Still dry?

Surprise beautiful sunrise

I came out to a windy but glorious sunrise. The rain had stopped by the dry winds continued, maybe an hour earlier. Tent was perfectly dry. I did the same, moving my pack to a safe spot before taking down the tent. Karen boiled water, I made my coffee and oatmeal, and we were soon on our way. We parted from the other four for the day, feeling anxious to take advantage of the great weather.

Hiking along the Paine

The hike was just… perfect. Blue skies mixed with clouds, the rain and snow usually off in the distant mountains. The hike followed the Paine River, which briefly becomes a lake then returns to river form.

Rainbow at the gate

Rain in the distance meant some great rainbow action. It would get gusty but the precipitation mostly just stayed away.

Wind at the pass

And gusty might be a bit of an understatement. There’s one big climb on this hike, about 400m, and as we reached the top plateau the winds went bonkers. I think it was gusting 50-60 mph. Not enough to ever feel endangered, but a challenge to work through. Some rain came along too and I was in full rain pants and rain jacket garb.

After dropping into a riparian valley, with lots of new plants and shrubs, the weather calmed again. We passed through a wetlands with some boardwalk traverse, and as the hike ended we climbed up to another ridge.

Lake and Camp Dickson

At the top of the ridge before us was Lake Dickson along with Camp Dickson, situated on a peninsula just before the lake empties into the Paine River.

We arrived at camp about 2pm after hiking 18km in 5 hours. We had to check in with a park ranger in addition to checking into our camp. There’s a ton of preset tents for those choosing that option here, but in this camp there are no platform tents.

Southern Lapwing

We used our bonus afternoon time to walk the black sand and rock beach along the lake, including some foot soaking in the glacier water. We were rewarded with some bird sightings: crested caracara, Chimango caracara, southern lapwing, and the dark-faced ground-tyrant (!).

Tomorrow is an easy hike to Los Perros but will have colder weather and maybe a lot of rain and wind in the morning. We might delay our departure a bit as the weather should only improve.